Category: School visits (Page 1 of 2)

Announcing a School Visit Special

January 29, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

This offer for local schools has been extended to include the 2018/19 school year. If you’re not local and are willing to pay travel expenses, email me and hopefully we can set something up. My email is KatieLCarroll (at) yahoo (dot) com.

I’m offering a school visit special for the first time ever! If your school or organization purchases 30 or more of my books directly from me (at $10.00 each, either ELIXIR BOUND or PIRATE ISLAND), I’ll do a free writing workshop or assembly. Some of workshop topics include writing fantasy, revision, and generating ideas. I’m also open to working a specific writing topic to fit your needs.

This is for school’s I’d be able to visit without an overnight stay. So that means pretty much anywhere in Connecticut and extending out into parts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and possibly New York. If you’re not sure, just contact me at KatieLCarroll (at) yahoo (dot) com, and I’ll do my best to work something out.

Check out my School Visit Brochure here or my Author Visits page for testimonials. And here is the free Pirate Island Curriculum Guide that includes reader questions, a writing prompt, a nature lesson and activity, and a history of Captain Kidd and activity.

This offer is good for what’s left of the 2017/18 school year, though if I get interest for the fall as well, I might be able to accommodate you. If you know any educators who might be interested in this, please feel free to share my info with them.

How Readers and Authors Connect Poll Results

April 13, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

I know a lot of you have been waiting for the results of the two polls I conducted on how readers and writers connect. To be clear, though I did take a statistics course in college, I ran no analytics on the statistical significance of the results. My intention was never statistical significance, but merely to see what writers and readers who check out my blog had to say. The poll was open to anyone who happened to stop by the post over the course of time the poll was active, so that means a (very!) limited pool of people.

And, drum roll please….the much-anticipated results:

The wording of the reader poll was “As a reader, I enjoy connecting to authors through…” followed by a list of options, and voters could check as many choices as they wanted. This poll got a total of 70 votes.

Voters could leave a comment and one actually did. “Often find myself Googling authors and going on their pages because [name redacted] likes to see a pic of the author. He also wants to know if they are alive or dead- his obsession currently.” So authors, make sure to have a picture of yourself on your website and your life/death status!

It’s no surprise that Author’s Blog took the top spot as a way readers connect to writers since this poll was conducted on an author’s blog. I also suspected Facebook would be a big one (and one of the reasons I finally created an author Facebook page, which I’d love for you all to check out here).

Wattpad had a poor showing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good place to connect, just that the audience for this particular poll doesn’t use it in that way. I’m actually dipping my toes into Wattpad with my collection of soccer shorts TALES FROM THE FIELD: 12 STORIES, 1 CHAMPIONSHIP. You may remember some of these stories from the Lightning Quick Reads blog, but the year ended before the final few stories did. I’ll be posting a story a week until all 12 are up (and they’re free!).

Okay, on to the other poll:

The wording of the writer poll was “As a writer, I’ve had success connecting to readers through…” again followed by a list of options, and voters could select as many they wanted. There were 30 total votes on this part.

Another strong showing by Facebook solidified my choice to create an author FB page. The Other option came out higher than I expected. I asked voters to provide specifics for this, and blog, website, and newsletter were included as answers. I didn’t provide blog and website specifically in this poll because I already have those and have definitely had success connecting to readers through these, so I didn’t feel like I needed proof of that.

I wanted to mention this because even though I wasn’t interested in that response for this poll, I do think it’s very important for authors to have a static website for readers to land on. A blog is nice for authors to have as well. It does require work, but I find it’s worth it for me. I have considered doing a monthly newsletter and am still considering it for the future, but at present I don’t have plans to start one. There simply aren’t enough hours of the day for that right now.

Wattpad is responsible for that pesky 0% at the top there, but again I’m taking all these results with a grain of salt. In both polls, On-line Author Events scored on the low side, and I’ll definitely be taking that into consideration when I plan any future online promotion and blog tours. Not that I won’t be doing online promotion, but I might work to optimize my exposure time vs. how much time I put into preparing them.

School visits was a category I considered including, but ultimately didn’t because I didn’t think it was the right audience for it. Also, I 100% know that school visits are an awesome ways for kidlit authors to connect directly to readers. The trick to school visits is booking them.

Those are my thoughts on the poll results. I hope you found them useful regardless of the statistical implications. I’d love to continue hearing your thoughts on how readers and authors connect. What’s worked for you? What hasn’t worked (which is sometimes more useful to share)? Do you care? (If you don’t why are you reading this?) 😉

School Visits, a Book Launch, and Dr. Seuss’s Birthday!

March 2, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

What better day than Dr. Seuss’s birthday than to celebrate how I’ve been living a creative life? And though I haven’t been writing in the drafting-a-new-book sense (my favorite kind of writing), I’ve been immersing myself in the creative life in other ways.

The reign of school visits ended last week. In less than three weeks, I taught eight writing workshops to more than 200 students, ranging from grades 4 to 7. This particular workshop is about where story ideas come from and includes a guided writing/thought exercise where the kids come up with their own story ideas. They never cease to amaze me with their thoughtfulness and creativity. The workshop is about inspiring kids, but I always come out inspired by them!

After one session, a 6th-grade girl walked down the hallway with me and shared a poem she had written about herself. It was lyrical, had a great cadence, and optimistic, a beautiful portrayal of herself. After another, nearly the entire 4th-grade class lined up with their scraps of papers and waited in line for my autograph, totally making me feel like a celebrity. Connecting with young readers and writers is 20160302_132004 magical! Plus, talking with the librarians and teachers who teach these kids everyday is informative and inspiring.

Monday the Connecticut Humanities and the authors and illustrators of THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER celebrated the hardcover and audio release of the book at a local library. It’s always fun to catch up with my Caper collaborators. I haven’t listened to the whole audio version yet, but what I did listen to was brilliantly narrated (listen to the Caper audiobook here).

Of course, I’ve been reading a lot. In particular, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone of YA and reading adult books and non-fictions. And always, always, always reading to the boys. Last week I squeezed in visiting The Boy’s pre-school class for World Read Aloud Day. I’ll leave you with some of our favorite Seuss books.

Busy Times and The Great CT Caper Book Launch

February 22, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

The school visits have all been wonderful so far! (I’ll have some really fun stuff to share from them soon when I get a chance to breathe.) Two more single workshops this week and then I’m done for awhile.

Also, I’ll be attending THE GREAT CT CAPER book launch (registration required, but the event is free) on Monday, February 29, 2016 from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m, hosted by the CT Humanities. The middle grade serialized mystery is now a hardcover book. Meet some of the authors and illustrators, enjoy light refreshments, and snag some Caper goodies.

In the meantime, the cool dudes at my house are happy the sun came out!

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February Writing Life Update

February 10, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

February has historically been my least favorite month. It’s a low part of the year for me for some reason that I’ve never been able to adequately pinpoint. I think the weather is part of it. Here in southern New England, the days are short and cold and spring feels a long way off. (Although we did have a nice stretch of warmish weather last week.)

This year I think I’m going to be too busy for the late-winter blahs. In addition to reading a lot, I’m deep in querying mode for one project; looking forward to carving out some writing time for a new project that has yet to move out of the “rumination stage,” as I like to call it; and excited (and nervous!) to have a bunch of school visits booked up for the second half of the month. (Not to mention hanging out with the boys!)

The nerves are because I’m feeling a little rusty as I haven’t done any youth writing workshops since last June, and because some of the upcoming workshops are for students that are a little younger than I’ve worked with before, and because it’s a lot of visits in a short amount of time. But I love working with the students, so I know once I practice a few more times and get going with the first one, I’ll be fine.

It’s the change of mentality I think that’s tripping me up. I spent a good deal of the second half of 2015 in writing and then revision mode (very internal acts), so it’s required a brain shift to move into the more external acts of querying and workshop teaching. Both are important parts of my creative life, but as I get older, I feel like the transition from one to the other has gotten harder.

One of these school visits I’ll remember to have someone take a few pictures of me teaching a writing workshop so I can share it here. What’s in store for all of you this month and the rest of winter?